by Marco

Vectronix

Hardcore arcade space combat. No mercy. No filler.

LIVEGame

iOS

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What this project demonstrates

End-to-end product execution from concept to shipped experience
Interaction design under real-time constraints
Systems design and behavior tuning
Technical implementation and performance optimization
Visual polish and usability under pressure
Product judgment around scope, pacing, and feedback loops

Projects like this are part of my independent lab. They are here as proof of interaction design depth, systems thinking, technical execution, and the ability to ship polished products end to end.

Vectronix is a space shooter built on one principle: every system earns its place through gameplay, not nostalgia. The formation AI runs 9 distinct enemy types, each with their own HP, dive behavior, and tactical role. Grunts swarm in numbers. Commanders pull escorts. Bombers absorb multiple hits. Guardians take three shots and show holographic corruption damage as you chip away at them. Bosses deploy tractor beams that can capture your ship mid-game.

The tractor beam system is where the game gets interesting. A boss can capture your fighter and fly away with it. If you destroy that boss while it is diving, you rescue the captured ship and enter dual fighter mode, doubling your firepower. If you destroy it while it is sitting in formation, your ship is lost. The system never fires the tractor beam on your last life, so the tension is always real without being unfair.

Dive attacks go beyond simple downward swoops. There are 8 solo dive patterns including zigzags, spirals, banking S-curves, and feint-and-strike maneuvers. Starting from wave 6, enemies coordinate group dives in V-formations and echelon patterns. Difficulty scales across wave cycles with increasing speed multipliers and shorter dive intervals. Challenge stages appear every 5th wave with a 10,000 point perfect bonus.

The game ships with two handcrafted display modes. Vector mode is a 5-pass WebGL pipeline that simulates a blue phosphor vector monitor: bloom, Gaussian blur, chromatic aberration at screen edges, per-channel phosphor persistence trails, and analog noise. CRT mode simulates an NTSC consumer television with barrel distortion, Trinitron aperture grille masking, Gaussian beam scanlines, rolling scan bands, interlace flicker, and warm color temperature. Both modes are real shader pipelines, not image filters.

All audio is procedurally synthesized through the Web Audio API. Firing, explosions, dive swooshes, tractor beam hum, extra life fanfares. No sample files. The game runs at 768x672 on a WebGL renderer with Capacitor for iOS native builds. Touch controls use 1:1 position mapping with a swipe zone and dedicated fire button. No ads, no in-app purchases, no progression gates. Pure arcade skill.